‘Cultivating Hope’ seminar on terrorism

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) and SAMAA TV jointly held the second phase of a series of seminars on the project titled “Cultivating Hope”, where young female students were made aware of the challenges and impact of extremism and their important role to cultivate hope in society. The seminar held at the Lahore College for Women University (LCWU) followed up by a second event at the Punjab University.

The seminars included the participation of prominent representatives from the public sector, academia and development organizations. More than 600 participants including students were part of the interactive Q&A session, which allowed the youth to ask the exclusive panel members questions, debate and analyze the current socio-political situation of Pakistan and conveyed the leaders on how the youth envisions its role and future.

The panel members included the Governor of Punjab, Mr. Salman Taseer, Mr. Syed Kamal Shah, Former Secretary Interior, Abrar Ul-Haq, famous singer and philanthropist, Brigadier Mowadat Rana, Dr. Ahsan Akhtar Naz, Director Institute of Communication Studies University of Punjab, Dr. Sadaqat Ali, leading psychiatrist and Mr. Mohammad Akram Awan , father of 02 sons who were victims of the recent Moon market blast in Lahore.

The panel members provided a diversified background which created a whole range of different perspectives and frameworks for the students to process their views, engage themselves and create content for the subject.

Speaking as the Chief Guest, Governor Punjab Mr. Salman Taseer said that “Religious and political forces are united to defeat the menace of terrorism and there is no room for terrorism and extremism in Pakistan. Our religion, culture and traditions are sign of prestige for us, he maintained. Islam is the religion of tolerance, unity, peace and harmony.”

Mr Taseer further added, “Terrorists could not impose their so called agenda on us which is against our values and the spirit of democracy. Democracy and freedom of opinion should prevail in society to root out extremism and terrorism.”

Mr. Syed Kamal Shah highlighted the urgent need to restore stability in the region to revive the socio-economic development and improvement of the business industry.

“To defeat the terrorists we need to change the attitude of the people, particularly youth. The universities can play a very constructive and positive role in motivating and educating the people about the true objectives of terrorists. He emphasized that ministry of education and universities should jointly launch programs, which help our youth to become responsible citizens”, said Mr. Kamal.

Speaking at the event Mr. Abrar-ul-Haq, said that” Gone are the days when the selfish rulers exploited youth’s rights. Today’s youth is very much conscious about their rights and duties.”

The project “Cultivating Hope” includes Pakistan’s first Inter-University documentary competition against extremism. The project focus on empowering the youth to look into the measures, impact and results of extremism, which will not only strengthen their minds to take distance to such thinking and behavior but to also play a role in educating their peers and surroundings on the horror of terrorism. The Cultivating Hope initiative will also promote the visual and liberal arts in the country’s education sphere as a form of creative expression and ideas.

HEC and SAMAA TV have called out for documentaries on various themes of extremism through all HEC affiliated universities across Pakistan. According to the partnership, the top three winners of the documentary competition will be awarded prizes amounting to Rs. 1,000,000, Rs. 500,000 and Rs. 300,000. They will also be offered a one-year job contract with SAMAA TV after completing their academic degrees.

SAMAA TV is one of Pakistan’s leading private satellite television channels, which takes pride in its fair, factual and independent news coverage through its on-the-hour bulletins, breaking stories, incisive political analysis and current affairs programs. The channel is the first media channel is Pakistan to have established a well-integrated Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Program as part of it business activities. SAMAA TV’s CSR program carries various initiatives within health, education, environment and outreach programs focusing on improving the socio-economic situation of Pakistan.

The channel has also made a niche for itself through its programs on women and youth issues besides infotainment and sports. SAMAA TV, launched in December 2007 has network of district correspondents and five bureaus across Pakistan along with international stringers in the Middle East, Europe and North America.

Pakistan ranked127th among 130 countries on gender parity

The World Economic Forum in its annual report Global Gender Gap Report 2008, released today ranked Pakistan at 127th among the 130 countries in the world.

According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2008 (GGGR), published each year by the World Economic Forum, the social and economic empowerment of women is still very low and they are still struggling for their livelihood and survival.

Norway (1) leads the world in closing the gender gap between men and women, according to the overall ranking in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2008. Three other Nordic countries – Finland (2), Sweden (3) and Iceland (4) – also top the Report’s Gender Gap Index. Previously higher ranking countries such as Germany (11), United Kingdom (13) and Spain (17) slipped down the Index but stayed in the top 20, while Netherlands (9), Latvia (10), Sri Lanka (12) and France (15) made significant gains.

The United States (27) made progress this year and closed gender gaps in estimated earned income and perceived income gaps for similar work. The United States also made strides in political empowerment, driven by increased participation of women in political decision-making positions. Switzerland’s (14) advancement up the rankings was based on large increases in the percentage of women in parliament and those in ministerial-level positions. France (15) improved significantly for the third consecutive year, thanks to gains in both economic participation and political empowerment. China (57) gains 17 places relative to last year driven by narrowing gender gaps in educational attainment, economic participation and political participation. Brazil (73) improves on education and economic participation but falls to 110th place in political empowerment. In the bottom half of the rankings, countries such as Tunisia (103), Jordan (104) and United Arab Emirates (105) made overall gains, driven by narrower gaps in literacy, and in the case of Jordan and the UAE, in the percentage of women in political decision-making positions. Syria (107), Ethiopia (122) and Saudi Arabia (128) not only fell farther in the relative ranking, but also showed a drop in scores relative to their own performance last year. India (113), Iran (116), Nepal (120) and Pakistan (127) continue to hold some of the lowest positions in the Asian rankings, but on average all four countries post gains relative to their own performances in 2006 and 2007, signifying a positive trend. While much work needs to be done across the board in all four countries, in particular to close gender gaps in education, India, Nepal and Pakistan are distinctive for performing above average in political empowerment.

The Global Gender Gap Index scores can be interpreted as the percentage of the gap between women and men that has been closed. The three highest ranking countries have closed a little over 80% of their gender gaps, while the lowest ranking country has closed only a little over 45% of its gender gap. Out of the 128 countries covered in both 2007 and 2008, more than two-thirds have posted gains in overall index scores, indicating that the world in general has made progress towards equality between men and women. Additionally, taking averages across the subindexes for these 128 countries reveals that, globally, progress has been made on narrowing the gaps in educational attainment, political empowerment and economic participation, while the gap in health has widened.

“Greater representation of women in senior leadership positions within governments and financial institutions is vital not only to find solutions to the current economic turmoil, but to stave off such crises in future. At the World Economic Forum, we put strong emphasis on addressing this challenge with a multistakeholder approach through our global and regional Gender Parity Groups,” said Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum. These communities of highly influential leaders from business, politics, academia, media and civil society – 50% women and 50% men – seek to share best practices and identify the most effective strategies to optimize the use of talent.

The Global Gender Gap Report 2008 is based on the innovative new methodology introduced in 2006 and includes detailed profiles that provide insight into the economic, legal and social aspects of the gender gap in each country. The Report measures the size of the gender gap in four critical areas of inequality between men and women:

1) Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
2) Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher-level education
3) Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
4) Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio

The Report is the result of collaboration between Ricardo Hausmann, Director of the Centre for International Development at Harvard University, USA; Laura Tyson, Professor of Business Administration and Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, USA; and Saadia Zahidi, Head of Constituents at the World Economic Forum.

“The Index assesses countries on how well they are dividing their resources and opportunities among their male and female populations, regardless of the overall levels of these resources and opportunities. Thus, the Index does not penalize those countries that have low levels of education overall, for example, but rather those where the distribution of education is uneven between women and men,” said Hausmann.

The Report also provides some evidence on the link between the gender gap and the economic performance of countries. “Our work shows a strong correlation between competitiveness and the gender gap scores. While this does not imply causality, the possible theoretical underpinnings of this link are clear: countries that do not fully capitalize effectively on one-half of their human resources run the risk of undermining their competitive potential. We hope to highlight the economic incentive behind empowering women, in addition to promoting equality as a basic human right,” added Tyson.

“The Report reveals that progress is not only possible, but possible in a relatively short space of time: calculating the Index as far back as data would allow, we found that countries such as Chile, Spain, Turkey and Finland have closed between 5 and 10 percentage points of their respective gender gaps over just the past eight years.

When we interpret these percentage changes at the societal level, we see that hundreds of thousands of lives are impacted, and at the economic level, we see enormous potential competitiveness gains,” said Zahidi.

The World Economic Forum continues to expand geographic coverage in the Report. Featuring a total of 130 countries, this year’s Report provides an insight into the gaps between women and men in over 92% of the world’s population. Coverage has been expanded this year to include Barbados and Brunei Daressalam. The Report covers all current and candidate European Union countries, 23 from Latin America and the Caribbean, 23 from sub-Saharan Africa, over 20 from Asia and 15 from the Middle East and North Africa. Thirteen out of the 14 variables used to create the Index are from publicly available “hard data” indicators from international organizations, such as the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Health Organization.

The report identifies gaps in most socio-economic areas of the country. Pakistan ranks 117th, in both women’s literacy rate and workforce population; in healthy life expectancy, it ranked 115th; enrollment in primary education it ranked 110th, in wage equality for similar work it ranked 60th, while in years of female head of state, it ranked at number 5.

Tourist bus attacked with bullets near Cape Town:

Tourist bus attacked with bullets near Cape Town. No one injured. The bus was carrying delegation members for the TCI Annual Conference 2008. The delegation included cluster practioners from Sweden, Finland, Canada, Pakistan, India, Germany, Mexico and the United States.